Votes For Women VOTES FOR WOMEN: In 2019, a Votes For Women exhibition was held in the Museum. The display was a culmination of the Vote 100 project, which combined new research about the brave women in Devizes who campaigned for the vote, with fabulous banners made by community groups in 2018 (the centenary of women’s suffrage in the UK). Alongside working with inspirational woment to produce the banners and walking the 2018 Devizes carnival with them, we also discovered some amazing stories about local women and their fight for the vote in the early 20th century. You can read all about the project and see extracts from the exhibition here.
Wessex Women WESSEX WOMEN WORKSHOP: In late 2019 and early 2020, our Community Curator ran a series of Wessex Women workshops. She spoke to local women about their working lives, asking participants to choose an object that represents their work life and bring it with them (papers, letters, and photographs as well as physical objects). Their conversations were then recorded and documented in the Museum collection as part of the Meaning of Things project.
Objects on Tour - Wessex Museums OBJECTS ON TOUR: WESSEX WOMEN Our four partner museums have explored their collections and found objects that tell the untold stories of our region's women and their past - from the unexpected to the ground-breaking and intriguing.
Our research
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Women’s Land Army
Read morePhotograph of 'Land Girls' on a Wiltshire farm close to Devizes. The Women's Land Army boosted agricultural production during the Second World War as men left to serve in the armed forces. We have a recording by Jean Davis that
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From Salisbury Museum: Downton Lace Pillow
Read moreCurrently on display in our Museum is the Downton Lace Pillow from Salisbury Museum. The Downton Lace Pillow with its lace pattern and bobbins, part finished as it would have been to display patterns to potential buyers, was chosen by
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Pots excavated by Maud Cunnington
Read moreCurrently touring Wessex Museums as part of our latest 'Objects on Tour' are Iron Age pots, these were excavated by Maud Cunnington at All Cannings Cross. Famous for her work on the prehistoric sites of Wiltshire, Maud led many important
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Wiltshire’s Women Writers
Read moreFor Women’s History Month, we're taking a look back at famous female writers in Wiltshire. One of our Library volunteers has been digging through our stacks (and elsewhere in Wiltshire) and found an incredible array of authors – from the
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George Eliot and Devizes
Read moreDuring work in our Library and Archive, one of our volunteers discovered some interesting connections between George Eliot and Devizes. Newspaper cuttings of Eliot’s visit to Devizes, alongside ‘The George Eliot Fellowship Review (number 7)’ a postcard of her birthplace.